Post 6: One Foot in the Darkness

This is what one foot in the darkness looked like for me.

Not the version where faith arrives all at once and the whole path lights up ahead of you. The one that is less comfortable but more common.

I had heard the phrase many times — that faith means moving forward before you can see where you're going. I had nodded at it in conference talks. I understood it intellectually. 

And then Rex died. In the hospital room, I remember thinking, Well, I guess I’ll find out if I really believe what I say I do. 

It didn't feel like strength. It felt like putting one foot where I couldn't see the ground and hoping something would be there.

Sometimes the footing came quickly. Sometimes it didn’t.

The financial concerns took months. I spent hours on the phone, spread over days and weeks, navigating accounts, institutions, and procedures. Most people were kind. They offered a moment of solace, and then we had to get down to business. Some answers came slowly. Some took months. A few loose ends stretched almost a year.

The answers weren't clear. The resolutions didn't come on schedule. I prayed for confidence. I prayed for clarity. I prayed for optimism and faith multiple times a day because I didn't have them in me then. I was asking for what I couldn't generate on my own.

For several weeks I didn't watch television. I filled my home instead with conference talks, BYU devotionals, and Come, Follow Me podcasts. Not because I had a plan or a system. Because I knew what was holding me up, and I knew I couldn't let go of it. 

My home became a sanctuary. Not peaceful exactly — I was still on the phone, still waiting for answers, still praying the same prayers. But steady. The Spirit was present, and I stayed close to it on purpose.

Gradually, the sports came back. The TV came back. The financial concerns resolved, one by one, in ways I couldn't have engineered. Not always the way I expected. But they resolved.

As the miracles came after Rex died, I recognized them. I prayed for them. I looked for them. And I was amazed by how many came.

What surprised me was something else. As those miracles unfolded, I began to remember other moments from earlier in my life — moments when help had come, when timing had mattered, when doors had opened in ways I couldn’t explain. At the time, I had been grateful, but I hadn’t fully recognized them as miracles.

Now I could see them differently. They weren’t isolated experiences. They were part of a larger pattern. And seeing that pattern gave me something to hold onto.

I realized: I need as much faith in the future as I do in the past. 

I still say it. It's still a challenge.

That's what I was practicing in those months. Not blind faith. Not pretending the darkness wasn't there. Just choosing to trust, based on evidence that was already behind me, that the footing would arrive.

It did.

It wasn't comfortable getting there. It wasn't heroic. There was no soundtrack in the background.

It was hours on the phone and prayers before breakfast and a television that stayed off for a month.

That’s what one foot in the darkness looked like.

And if you are in a season where the answers aren’t coming, and the clarity hasn’t arrived, I want you to know that the footing can still be there even when you can’t see it yet.